


About the Sun

by sunflowerbright



Series: Gift-Verse [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 01:25:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/668677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerbright/pseuds/sunflowerbright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'He purchases it before his mind has even caught up with what he’s doing, and it stays in his pocket after that. For a very long time. Even if she's not here to give it to.' The Doctor and moving on after Rose, not at all knowing that he doesn't have to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	About the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel - or actually more of a prequel - to In Orbit Around you, a fic that was spawned from the whole idea of the Doctor buying Rose gifts while they were seperated, as a way of feelings closer to her. It works best if you've read that one first

It starts with a pink ribbon.

It’s not even doing anything. It’s just there, in the line of his vision, tied to the pole of a stand, gently fluttering in the wind amongst a hundred others like it, all different shades and colours. Blues and greens and greys and reds.

And pink. This one is pink like that jumper she had such a fondness for. Like the nail polish she’d worn for a week before all of it had been scratched off by her own impatient fiddling. Like her duvet back at her room at the Powell Estate. It’s not as dark as the colour of her clothes when she’d burned golden aboard the Game Station and it’s not as light as the rug in one of her favored rooms back in the TARDIS, the one with the plush chairs and an aquarium filled with bright blue fish.

The wind lets go of the ribbon and it falls gently down, hanging limply without movement. If she’d been here with him _(she isn’t)_ she’d have bought it and he’d have asked her what in the world she’d want with a pink ribbon, and she’d have tied it around her wrist and giggled at him and poked out that tongue between her teeth and said, ‘ _It’s a human thing, you wouldn’t understand_ ’, and he would have acted affronted and she would have teased him until he’d smiled _(he doesn’t smile)._

If she’d been here with him she’d have bought it, or perhaps just eyed it with slight curiosity, telling herself to go find something more exciting and if it had been one of _those_ days, a day that didn’t come right after another civilization ending, more lives lost, a day where he hadn’t woken up from a nightmare or had to wake her up from one, if it had been one of the _really_ good days where she’d done nothing but smile from the very start, then maybe he would have offered to buy it for her. And she’d have refused and said she could do it herself, and he’d have insisted and then done it before she could protest further, just to watch her blush and smile and tie the ribbon around her wrist. She would have taken his hand and tugged him along and he’d be happy just to follow.

It’s 21 days, 6 hours, 4 minutes and 2.5647383 seconds since he’s last seen her, and the pink ribbon had just started fluttering in the wind again, teasingly beckoning him forwards.

He purchases it before his mind has even caught up with what he’s doing, and it stays in his pocket after that. For a very long time.

 

oOo

 

It’s a ring next. Not a fancy engagement ring, no god no, he isn’t that sappy _(he tells himself)_ , but just an ordinary, rather beautiful silver ring, the shapes of small elephants carved into the sides. He remembers how she used to weight down her fingers and hands with at least three different rings each day, adding an extra, solid weight when he held her hand. She’d grown out of it a bit after a while, but she’d still always had quite a fancy for them. He tells himself that it’s a good thing that after 37 days, 10 hours, 3 minutes and 3,785986 seconds, he can still remember things like that about her.

She would have bought this one right after they returned from Africa. It had been in his previous incarnation, and he’d been aiming for 1500th France and instead landed them somewhere in the midst of a jungle, one of the large, grey animals already wandered over to inspect the blue box on closer sight. Rose had shrieked in half-fright and shock when she’d seen it, and he’d laughed for a good half hour when the elephants misplaced owner had told them the animals long and intricate name, and then gone on to explain that they’d simply shortened it to _Rose._

Seemed like there was a habit of naming animals that _(but that thought hurt)._

“Shall I gift-wrap it for you sir?” The owner of the small corner-shop asks and he says yes before he can think about it. This one doesn’t stay in his pockets, he throws it away as soon as he reaches the TARDIS, his hands shaking as he does so. Because it’s been gift-wrapped, ready and waiting and she’s not here to open it. She won’t ever be again.

If the small gift appears on his desk instead of the rubbish bin the next morning, he doesn’t comment on it, instead leaves it there, tucked into a corner behind a stack of books, unseen but not forgotten.

 

oOo

 

“Doctor! Watch out!”

He barely manages to duck, Martha’s screams reaching his ears just in time, as the laser beam zooms past, possibly frizzling some of his hair in the process (oh, he’s really not going to be happy if that’s the case), and hitting the tree in front of them instead.

Causing the tree to slowly, as if in epically designed slow-motion, to fall towards them, ready to crush them with its impossibly wide trunk.

If he yelps it really is a rather manly yelp, and if his voice is just a bit high-pitched (well, more high-pitched than usual), it is only because the smoke and fumes from the burning silver-mines, or what amounts to it on this planet, have choked him just a little – and apparently also slowed him down, because it takes Martha’s somewhat-clear head to drag him away just in time, making sure that the tree only hits the rather nastier of the two aliens here.

“Oh… well… that’s…” he mutters, staring at where the tree has fallen, hiding the now-dead alien from sight. “Um, unfortunate.”

“Yes, rather,” Martha agrees, looking a little grey, but at least the fumes are clearing away. “Really is his own fault for wanting to bank all the mines for himself though. Shoulda known better, eh?”

“Yep,” the Doctor agrees, stuffing his hands in his pockets _(his fingers doesn’t stroke over a pink ribbon, oh no, not at all)_ , and walking away with her in tow.

They’d landed there a day ago, and now with the leader dead, it seemed the mines rightful owners could finally get some peace and quiet. He didn’t quite manage to weasel himself and Martha out of being thanked and celebrated, and dutifully stood as several worker and wives and children of said workers ran up to hug and thank him for saving their livelihood. Not that he minded, but after getting nearly squashed by the seventeenth blue and slightly spikey alien, he was getting quite tired of it, to be honest.

Until a young girl, black hair flowing down her back in dark ripples, slowly walks up and trusts something heavy and slightly sharp into his hand.

“Thank-you,” she says and walks away before he can even get a proper look at her face.

It’s not silver, because this planet doesn’t have that, but it shines like it, a reflective, distorted surface made up of scratches and tiny veins.

It’s a flower, covered by the _(not)_ silver as it had been liquefied and spread over the ground by the heat of the explosion. It’s not a rose, because they don’t have those here either, but it looks close, so close in fact, that his breath catch and he can do nothing but stare at it for several moments, his heart beating erratically and completely out of sync.

It’s lovely.

“Doctor?” Martha’s voice breaks through the haze and he quickly pockets the flower before she can see it, letting it fall to the bottom of the pocket in his suit-jacket.

He’s still not sure later _(64 days, 8 hours, 9 minutes and 6.9575689 seconds)_ if the weight he can feel of it is comforting or just as heavy as the weight on his shoulders.

 

oOo

 

The next thing is found inside the TARDIS wardrobe room. He isn’t sure if it truly is something he’s picked up on his travels or something the TARDIS has provided, or maybe something one of his many companions has brought along and lost here sometime. It’s never really occurred to him before, the fact that even after they’ve left him, there are little pieces, a changed corridor, a new chair, clothing strewn in random places. Faint echoes of what used to be.

He stands with it in his hands for a long while, looking at the soft tenures. She would have…

… loved it. It’s a given thought. He knows her well enough to know what would probably do and what most certainly wouldn’t, but there is always some doubt. Always surprises, even in the people you know the most. And there’s the pink ribbon and the elephant ring and the silver rose, and now a bloody hat to go with it. It’s blue and kinda frilly, but it would fit her and then maybe she wouldn’t complain the next time he took her to a freezing planet or snowy Christmas in Cardiff.

_(except of course, she isn’t here to complain_ ) _(he doesn’t stop to think about how pathetic the fact that he misses that is)_

“My ears are freezing off,” he can practically hear her say, shaking in an alien bunker, a storm of ice and snow whizzing around the walls outside.

“No, they aren’t. It’s not nearly cold enough,” he’d dutifully informed her, only to be glared at. He remembered what had happened next, remember it _vividly,_ how he’d pulled her to him without another word, her arms sliding around his waist underneath his coat and pressing close _(they fit)_ , able to get some warmth as here his body wasn’t the coldest thing around.

“Your earrings,” he’d said then, just now noticing.

“What about them?” her hand had flittered up to touch the small, heart-shaped pin. He missed that arm around him as soon as it left. “You don’t like them?”

“Sure, they’re very pretty,” he agreed, thinking that if he annoyed her she might step away and that was… not good. “But Rose, you can get frostbite. You need to take them out.”

“Oh,”

The hat – its a light, almost baby-blue, frilly and just right for cold weather – nearly fell to the floor, his mind catching up with the real world. Those earrings.

She hadn’t worn them ever since, probably lying forgotten in the jacket she’d worn that day. It takes approximately only three minutes to locate the jacket (three minutes is nothing compared to the 120 days, 5 hours, 9 minutes and 1.8939 seconds since he’d last seen her), and dive into its pockets, the small jewels painfully marking his palms as he clutches them tightly.

He puts the earrings back in her room, softly laid beside her other jewelry, and the hat strewn almost carelessly on her bed, as if just waiting for her to find it.

He tells himself he really has to stop this. He leaves her room before he becomes unable to do so.

 

oOo

 

Donna Noble is brilliant. It has to be said – even if, god forbid, not to her face – and say it (to himself) he will. Definitely. Donna Noble is brilliant. He only takes the best after all.

If only she wasn’t so goddamn _nosy._

“So what’d she look like then?”

“What?” he grunted, elbow deep in wires and circuits, barely able to hear her over the grinding complaints of the TARDIS as he fiddled with her programming (no, fixed. Not fiddled. Definitely fixed).

“Rose. What’d she look like?”

He drops the screwdriver with a loud _thunk._ Silence follows in its wake.

It’s a simple enough question. An ice-breaker. Donna _knows_ about Rose, was there just after… she’d seen, really seen, first-hand what it had done to him. And asking what she looked like… safe enough way to start. Not too personal. Not up-close. Nothing about… feelings or past business or anything. Just simple. Simple question, simple answer.

_She was blonde. Heart-shaped face. Soft-looking skin, even softer-looking lips. Brown eyes. Doe eyes. A freckle on her collarbone that she had been teased about when she was little._

_All pink and yellow and human._

“Sorry,” Donna offers tentatively as the silence reaches an uncomfortable point.

“It’s alright,” the Doctor says, crawling up on the grating without looking her in the eye. “I… she was… I can show you a picture.”

“Okay,” Donna mumbles. “I’ll go make tea then?”

“Yeah. That would be nice.”

He forgets about the wiring he was supposed to be doing, and instead of tea and looking at pictures of Rose, they end up in Napoleon’s backyard and when they finally manage to get back to the TARDIS, they don’t speak of it again.

Not until Agatha Christie at least, and an off-hand comment from her about Charles Dickens and ghosts a Christmas, and he’s always been a sucker for trying to impress his companions and before long she’s had the entire story pulled out of him.

It felt nice. It hurt sure, but his hearts thundering away in pain is something he is so accustomed to he hardly even notices it anymore _(and he isn’t sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing)_ and it is almost a relief to talk to someone about it, to revive something that is genuinely a happy memory (for the most part, at least), with someone who doesn’t push, because while Donna normally does everything but _not_ push, she somehow has an inexplicable sense of when to just _not_. Especially concerning Rose.

They’re in a bookstore a few days later when she finally properly gets her head around the whole _time machine_ bit and asks him how long it’s been _for him_ since he lost Rose.

He lies and says he doesn’t now, and he’s pretty sure she can see right through him, can see the ever-growing numbers printed on the very front of his personal mind-screen, but for once he doesn’t want to acknowledge them.

For the first time since a beach in Norway, he feels like he actually wants to be happy, even if it’s happy without her.

He was honest when he said it would stop with that bloody hat and those bloody earrings, but he can’t help it when he sees it, and maybe _that_ is the whole reason Donna even insisted on dragging him here (getting a gift for her grandfather, yeah sure), and he has to silently tell himself that maybe Donna isn’t just brilliant, maybe she’s downright _fantastic._

The hardback-version of _A Christmas Carol_ is put on his nightstand, there to stay. Even if the dedication he wrote on the inside isn’t for himself.

 

oOo

 

This time it’s the first time he actively _searches_ for something. Because he’s decided that it has to end, that he needs to stop buying her presents just to pretend for a few seconds, that it’s no use moving on, that she’s probably having a great life _(how he hopes she is, safe and happy and how he hopes she’s as miserable as he is, missing him as much),_ and he can’t keep this up for the next hundred years.

Even if the masochistic part of him very much wants to.

They’re in one of the largest markets this galaxy has to offer, and there is bound to be something, _anything_ he can get. Something, maybe not perfect, but as close to it as anything can come, something that is bought with only her in mind, something final. A last goodbye.

He’ll do that for her. And then he’ll move on, a pink ribbon and a _(not)_ silver rose like fond and only slightly painful memories from then on.

He finds what he’s looking for, after what seems like hours of searching, in one of the dodgier streets in the market. It’s a small stall and the owner is half asleep already, but it’s… perfect.

Or as close to perfect as anything comes.

It’s a small, ornate box, pouring out blue smoke and mist forming into various forms and shapes. Shifting, changing, always surprising.

He buys it and thinks of how it would make her smile if she ever saw it _(not that she ever will)._

He thinks he’s – almost – quite ready to move on.


End file.
